Saturday…..Well that was “fun”…. No, not the cycling which was fine, but the fact that I went all the way to the ground where the game was supposed to be being played, only to find that the home club had moved the match to a plastic pitch back in the direction from which I had just come….. sigh. I do wish non league football clubs would update their Twitter feeds with such information to save wasted journey’s
Moving away from my moan… I do grumble a lot: sorry… and back to the rides. My first plan was to ride to Brerton over the Chase via Hendesford and then back via Little Haywood. However, as I had never even driven the way via Hendesford, I decided to stick to the roads I know and went via Penkridge Bank…. I quite like Penkridge Bank once you get up there (it’s quite a climb up Camp Road….well for around here it is quite a climb) apart from the car drivers who decided despite me doing 37 mph on the way down in a 40 zone (160 deer’s killed in 2015 shamefully) they just had to overtake me. Quite a nice ride: 15 miles at an average of just over 12.5mph along with about 1000 foot of climbing.
However, arriving at the ground, I found the match had been moved to… Hendesford and was kicking off in 30 minutes. Now Hendensford is about 6 miles away, so if the route was flat, that would be no issue. However, there are some lumpy bits in the way and one of the nastiest roads I have ever ridden on. So, I let the train take the strain… thankfully I got to the station just as it arrived.
After the match… a very well deserved win for the Mighty Penkridge FC, I really enjoyed the ride back: 8 miles at just over 14 mph….most of it downhill. So, not the 50km (sorry, mixed units) I had planned, but still quite a good ride despite being mucked around by the home club.